The technical legality of abolishing the states or implementing a considerably modified version of states leaves me cold.

We should surely be carefully analysing the advantages and disadvantages, then deciding what to do, and undertaking the necessary legal reforms accordingly, or leaving it as it is.

My preference would be for a two-tiered government system, with the lower tier being a hybrid between current local and state entities. I reckon we should have about thirty states, based roughly on the population size of Tasmania (about half a million), with larger-population states for the big cities and perhaps smaller ones for the vast lowly-populated north and northwest.

But unless this was accompanied with a whole lot of political reforms, with the facilitation of the advantages and minimisation of the negatives, then it should not happen. That should go without saying. But the important point is that we need to strive for a healthy sustainable future and then do what we have to do to achieve it, notwithstanding any difficulties with the constitution or other points of law.

As for Bob Hawke’s main reason for abolishing the states; so that the Feds can implement things much more easily and not be blocked or filibustered by state governments, particularly of the opposite political persuasion, is a two-way street. It would be good if the Feds were always right in what they wanted to achieve. But we can’t rely on that, especially while we are still horribly entrenched in the continuous-growth antisustainability paradigm.

The same reasoning applies when it comes to the duplication of approvals for new developments.

Under the current future-destroying mindset, the abolition of states, or any reduction in state powers, would probably be a bad thing.

Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 4 January 2013 8:04:39 AM

I don’t think Australians will ever get to vote on such changes to the constitution.

What I do think might get some traction would be an ultimatum to Tassie. They either make their economy self sustaining and end their parasitic eco-dependency on every other States’ GST, or we will move the entire ACT to Tassie and tow them all out to the Antarctic.

Eh voila, two problems solved.

Next?

Posted by spindoc, Friday, 4 January 2013 8:19:54 AM

Remeber the Australia Party? They had a platform of replacing States with Regional Councils. Sounded good and then Victoria got mega councils under Mr Kennett. Did people feel more connected to those who set their rates and spent their money? Not really.Give all power to the Federal Government? Please NO. Who is going to keep those b@#%^$#s honest? We can't do it very well at the moment.Give the States back some real taxes and let them get on with service delivery as they are supposed to. Let the Commonwealth get on with keeping the country safe from external threats and well connected with communications.

Posted by Nhicks, Friday, 4 January 2013 8:30:36 AM

Russia, the USA, Canada, China, Brazil and India, all the countries near Australia in area, have at least three tiers of government, though this is not the same as federalism. Italy and France, larger in population but much smaller in area, have five tiers (including the European Union).

Every country in the world with more than 10 million people and every country of more than 500,000 square kilometres has at least three tiers of government.

Even citizens of the oft-quoted United Kingdom have four (or, in some parts of the country, five) levels of government – the European Parliament, the UK Parliament, regional assemblies (elected in the case of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Greater London) and unitary local authorities or, in some places, both county councils and district councils. New Zealand has both local councils and regional councils.

There are functions of government best performed with a certain population size. Some of these are too large to be taken on by local councils but do not need the whole nation to manage them. These functions would exist irrespective of the number of tiers of government and would cause divisions and subdivisions in a national bureaucracy to be created to manage them. Looking after parks and gardens and recreation centres is best done at the local level, but municipalities are too small to run a health system. Running hospitals is best done at the level of the states, but they are too small to have their own armies.

Each of the current states has a population concentration in one centre, which the rest of the state relates to. If we were starting again, we might have more states.

If the states were abolished, thus making Australia unique among the world’s large countries, the bureaucracy would remain the same size, and the levels of decision-making would remain the same. The only difference would be the people would not get to elect those who made the decisions at the intermediate level. We would be less democratic.

Posted by Chris C, Friday, 4 January 2013 8:32:17 AM

The constitution and the federation were formed or founded in the horse and cart era; both of which could do with some updating, to make them relevant to today's Australia. Besides, we will be rewriting the preamble to include and recognise Australia's first Australians! Why not make some changes in other areas as well? I mean, state Govts and their often quite massive and endlessly duplicating bureaucracies, cost the Australian tax payer 70+ billions PA, before so much as a single service is rolled out. There is nothing that state administrations do that can't be done as well or better by regional councils or the Fed! Our hospitals and schools provided far better services, for far fewer dollars, when they were largely autonomous and answered to largely unpaid voluntary regional boards? We also need to get back to councils composed of largely unpaid representatives! I mean, paid professional public servants do all the real work; and, the original Westminster system, was composed of entirely unpaid representatives. Extremely modest stipends were only ever included; and just to cover actual expenses, when dirt poor Labour reps came to office, with the onset of the industrial revolution. I see no advantage in an adversarial and seriously outdated parliamentary model. Or many trillions wasted on roadblocks in the path of genuine progress, since federation? We could keep the states, but replace adversarial parliaments with elected governors, who then appoint their admin staff, a dozen or so, who basically only keep their jobs until their boss is re-elected or dumped at the next electoral contest. [We need far more Indians, and far fewer chiefs!] Nor do I see any cogent argument for restoring state tax powers! I mean they already carve up the ubiquitous GST between them. Maybe what we need is some serious reform of, rather than an abolition of states! I mean, who would we play in State of Origin or Sheffield shield cricket? Rhrosty.

Posted by Rhrosty, Friday, 4 January 2013 10:35:42 AM

There is no better way to entrench metrocentric dominance of the political process, and exacerbate urban diseconomies of scale, than by abolishing states. We need more states, not less, because a seat of governance is an economic engine in its own right. It is no coincidence that we have five major states and five concentrations of wealth in their capitals.

And just one extra state would make our constitution workable because 4 out of 7 is a much easier majority than 4 out of 6. The economic viability of smaller states has been misreported by assuming that every new state will have the same cost burdens as those imposed by Bass Strait on Tasmania.

Burn this into your brain, the Tweed River is not Bass Strait. Does anyone seriously believe that Sydney delivers cheaper governance to "New North Wales" than a new parliament could deliver from Grafton?